Lt. Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, who wants a deal to bring the America's Cup regatta to San Francisco in place before he leaves his job as mayor in January, plans to introduce a binding agreement between the city and race organizers at the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The world-famous yachting race needs space and piers to build boats and show them off to the public. The first proposal was to center the operations at Piers 48-50, which need costly infrastructure work. In exchange for paying to shore up the piers, the city would give up the long-term leasing rights for the site.

The Giants complained that might interfere with their plans to build in the area, a development that could include a new basketball arena or concert hall.

So Newsom started pushing for the America's Cup to be put on the northern waterfront, where the piers don't need much work.

Alas, the new deal was summarily rejected Thursday by representatives for Oracle's Larry Ellison, who, as the current cup winner, gets to make the final call.

Now Newsom has little choice but to stick to the original plan at Piers 48-50 if he hopes to get a deal done before the clock expires.

As for the Giants, they declined our request for comment, saying that they preferred to negotiate in private.

Testing the waters: State Sen. Mark Lenohas been quietly floating the idea of offering himself as a candidate for interim mayor, even seeking meetings with the incoming supervisors who ultimately might make the pick.

However, State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who has been floated as a possible choice by the more liberal wing of the Board of Supervisors, tells us he's not interested.

"I just got re-elected with 84 percent of the vote. I think the people know where they want me," Ammiano said.

Maybe, but we're told some of his backers are looking into how much Ammiano's pension would rise if he served as mayor for a year in hopes of changing his mind.

Hotel talk: One of the biggest players in San Francisco's election Tuesday was a company whose name was barely mentioned: online travel service Expedia.com.

City campaign spending reports show Expedia put $800,000 into defeating Propositions J and K, a pair of measures that would have closed a loophole that allows online travel companies that resell rooms to pay the hotel tax at a discounted rate.

And the winner is...: Hands down, the most memorable TV ad of the campaign season was Jerry Brown's"echo" piece.

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results."

Or: "I don't owe anyone anything."

The ad, which began airing on Oct. 19, was months in the making.

It started over the summer when a supporter told a campaigning Brown that she heard Whitman spouting "we have to run the state more like a business" - something she had heard earlier out of Schwarzenegger's mouth.

Not totally surprising given that Whitman's consultants Michael Murphyand Rob Stutzman had run Schwarzenegger's 2003 election.

Soon the Whitman "echo" was being talked up by Brown's consultants, including media advisers Joe Trippiand David Doak and political strategist Michael Berman. Trippi then asked one of his researchers to start perusing YouTube to find any other parroted snippets.

As luck would have it, another Team Brown researcher who had worked four years ago on Democrat Phil Angelides' unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign had a box of old DVDs and VHS tapes of Schwarzenegger as well.

In a matter of days, Trippi's researcher showed up with a rough cut of more matching Schwarzenegger and Whitman lines than they ever imagined.

After that, it was just cut, paste - and wait for the right time to drop it.